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THE CHQ BUILDING - AN EPIC PAST

Dublin, 1856. The city had never seen anything quite like it. Over 3,600 bronzed and bearded red-coated soldiers marching down the quays, temporarily deafened by cheering crowds and the pipes and drums that resounded all around them. Some of the soldiers hobbled on crutches; others were missing arms or badly scarred. Upon the breasts of their handsome scarlet uniforms, each man sported the medal he had earned for his service in the British Army during its costly but victorious campaign against the Russians in the Crimea.

Shortly after the long column of soldiers passed the Custom House, they wheeled into a massive warehouse that lay on the east side of George’s Dock. The Tobacco Store, as it was then known, had been completely redesigned for the impending occasion - a massive banquet, paid for by the citizens of Dublin, to thank the soldiers for their war service. The walls of the warehouse were hung with huge flags of Britain and her key allies, including France, as well as banners displaying the names of Crimean battles such as Sebastopol and Balaklava and major players from the war like Lord Raglan and Florence Nightingale.

As well as the 3,628 soldiers, another 1,000 guests were seated in a purpose-built gallery overlooking them all. ‘When all were seated, and the sun shone in and lighted up in golden splendour the unparalleled scene, it was one of the grandest and most brilliant spectacles ever witnessed,’ marvelled one participant.

This week, almost 140 years after the Great Crimean Banquet took place, the Tobacco Store – now known as The chq Building - will become a place of immense historical importance once again with the opening of EPIC - The Irish Emigration Museum, an ingenious visitor experience that seeks to explain the story of the Irish diaspora, the millions who have left this island to pursue their luck overseas.

Spread over 20 galleries in the magnificent vaults beneath the building, the highly interactive, software-based exhibition hopes to become one of Dublin’s foremost tourist destinations. Conceived and privately funded by Neville Isdell, the Co. Down born former Chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola who bought The chq Building in 2013, it has been developed by the team behind the Titanic Belfast - Conal Harvey and Michael Counahan of CHL Consulting - together with Event Communications and Fiona Ross, previously head of the National Library of Ireland who operates as Museum Director. The whole project has been orchestrated by Mervyn Greene, Neville’s Kinsale based step-brother.

The chq Building was constructed 200 years ago as a bonded warehouse where tobacco, wines and spirits could be stored while awaiting assessment by the customs officers from the nearby Custom House. Completed between 1817 and 1820, the building was Ireland’s first completely iron-roofed warehouse. It was designed by John Rennie, one of the pre-eminent civil engineers of the Georgian Age, and completed by his equally accomplished fellow Scot, Thomas Telford.

One of its most exceptional features, attributed to Rennie’s son George, was the elaborate use of cast-and wrought-iron roof girders, columns and trusses, ensuring that the building was fireproof, a vital attribute given that its primary purpose was to store highly inflammable tobacco imports. A basement of barrel-vaulted chambers, composed of limestone and brickwork, was constructed under the floor to store the wines and spirits while internal illumination was provided by a series of lanterns at the apex of the vault roofs.

The dockers and merchants knew The chq Building as the Tobacco Store or, later, as Stack A. The warehouse formed part of a major complex built to the east of the Custom House between 1815 and 1823 that also included George’s Dock, the Inner Dock and other warehouses and yards for the Commissioners of Excise and Customs.

THE SCOVELLS

In 1825 the then government-owned warehouse and surrounding docks were leased to John and Harry Scovell, prominent wharf-owners from Southwark in south London. Their older brother Sir George Scovell was much revered for having cracked Napoleon’s secret ‘chiffre’ code at the height of the Peninsula Wars, enabling the Duke of Wellington to oust the French from Andalusia and to liberate Madrid. Sir George went on to serve at Waterloo and was Governor of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst for 20 years.

Harry Scovell was Deputy Assistant Paymaster to the British Army during the Iron Duke’s Iberian campaign, after which he married a daughter of Thomas Whitmore, the Secretary of the Commissioner of Customs in London. This proved serendipitous when Whitmore’s assistant secretary was sent to Dublin to oversee the lease of the Custom House Docks. It just so happened the assistant secretary was Charles Scovell, the youngest of the four Scovell brothers. The lease he offered to John and Harry was Georgian nepotism at its best, particularly in view of the ‘very extraordinary privileges’ they were granted in terms of charging entrance fees on all vessels that henceforth used the docks.

Despite persistent opposition from the Dublin merchants, including Arthur Guinness, the Scovells retained their monopoly on the docks through until 1841 when their holdings in the Irish capital were substantially down-sized. They were particularly hard hit in 1833 when a fire destroyed a massive warehouse on the west side of George’s Dock. Nonetheless, by the 1850s they still held The chq Building, including all the vaults below and the affiliated cranes and machinery, as well as a number of other smaller warehouses, sheds and timber yards nearby.

THE CRIMEAN BANQUET OF 1856

The Crimean Banquet was the brainchild of Fergus Farrell, the Lord Mayor of Dublin and a friend of Daniel O’Connell. Appalled by how badly British war veterans had been treated after the Napoleonic Wars, he conceived of the banquet as a way for Dubliners to show their appreciation to the men. It is estimated that one third of the 111,000 men who served in the British Army during the Crimean War were Irish, including 114 of those involved in the fateful Charge of the Light Brigade.

Harry Scovell made The chq Building freely available for the occasion while the engineer William Dargan, celebrated as the father of Irish railways, oversaw its conversion into a banqueting hall. Messrs. Spadaccini and Murphy laid on the sumptuous feast for the soldiers while wine merchant Henry Brennan donated a quart bottle of Dublin porter and a pint of port to each man. The event was a huge success, chronicled in detail in newspaper reports that were circulated far and wide across the British Empire. Lord Gough, one of several military icons who delivered stirring speeches that afternoon, declared it ‘the happiest moment’ in his life.

RESTORATION & REBIRTH

By the 1930s, The chq Building was being used as a storage depot for products such as sugar, tea and hops. However, the slate-roof building fell into decline during the latter decades of the twentieth century to such an extent that it had become an unofficial car park by the late 1970s.

It was on the cusp of destruction when Michael Collins and Associates were called in by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority to oversee an award-winning conservation and restoration of the building as a pedestrian mall, a project completed in 2003.

The standout feature of the restoration is the immense 50-metre glass gable installed at the south end by Paris-based engineers RFR (Rice Francis Ritchie). This pioneering façade was originally designed by the brilliant Dundalk-born engineer Peter Rice (1935–1992), widely regarded as one of the most distinguished structural engineers of the late twentieth century. His innovations in materials and design greatly advanced the nature of modern architecture. Following early work on the Sydney Opera House, he defined the structural elements of such buildings as the Centre Pompidou and the Pyramide Inversée at the Louvre in Paris. His influence has shaped a new generation of architects and engineers and fittingly he is one of the people featured in the EPIC Ireland exhibition.

Since Neville Isdell acquired the building in 2013 it has undergone another transformation, under the guidance of Darmody Architects, structural and civil engineer Casey O’Rourke and conservation architect Tom Breen who have together ensured that the historical fabric of this Georgian gem has been expertly maintained, repaired and renovated.

As well as hosting the new EPIC Ireland visitor experience, The chq Building is home to Dogpatch Labs, a San Francisco inspired operation originally established in Barrow Street in 2012. Under the leadership of 31-year-old Patrick Walsh it provides a vibrant co-working space for young technology companies seeking to grow and scale through collaboration with co-operative workshops, meet-ups, hackathons and community events. Since arriving in the building last year, Dogpatch members have also launched a number of social projects, while one resident, CoderDojo, a registered charity founded in Cork a few years ago teaches coding to tens of thousands of children in free weekly ‘dojo’ classes, educating a new generation of tech enthusiasts.

One of the nine barrel-vaulted vaults beneath The chq Building is well known amongst Dublin diners as the setting for the widely acclaimed ely bar and brasserie, while another chamber will become a gym where members can get fit.

As it approaches its 200th year, The chq Building’s relevance as a major city landmark has been reasserted once again. EPIC - The Irish Emigration Museum is certainly an appropriately concept for one of Dublin’s most important yet lesser-known historical gems.